| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: naturally grave and reflective and find their sustenance in tender
emotions. If the writer, like the surgeon beside his dying friend, is
filled with a species of reverence for the subject he is handling,
should not the reader share in that inexplicable feeling? Is it so
difficult to put ourselves in unison with the vague and nervous
sadness which casts its gray tints all about us, and is, in fact, a
semi-illness, the gentle sufferings of which are often pleasing? If
the reader is of those who sometimes think upon the dear ones they
have lost, if he is alone, if the day is waning or the night has come,
let him read on; otherwise, he should lay aside this book at once. If
he has never buried a good old relative, infirm and poor, he will not
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He
would whip her to make her scream, and whip her
to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue,
would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin.
I remember the first time I ever witnessed this hor-
rible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well re-
member it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember
any thing. It was the first of a long series of such out-
rages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a
participant. It struck me with awful force. It was
the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
